Relax! Smile From The Heart!
There is a difference between the Mundane and the Transcendental. If you purposefully confuse them, I will ignore you, you nihilist.
There is no Emotion, there is Peace. There is no Ignorance, there is Knowledge. There is no Passion, there is Serenity. There is no Death, there is the Force.

19 is a good answer, because unlike 40 and 96 it's mathematically correct. But it does destroy the beauty of the riddle, saying lines 2 and 3 are plainly wrong. There is another answer that is both mathematically correct and leaves the riddle intact...

"I struggled with some demons, They were middle class and tame..." L. Cohen

I remember when I was studying applied mathematics my teacher got up one day and wrote on the board:

1 + 1 = 0

He then went about showing how:

1+ the square root of 1 (which happens to be 1 or -1) = 2 OR 0

Since then, even a basic set of equations like that one shown in the example (where some people assumed that the middle two equations were false) take on a whole new meaning.

Instead of assuming the two middle equations were (technically) wrong (which they are, since they are basic additions), I instantly started looking for a pattern.

"My religion is not deceiving myself."Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde

I didn't really mean to start a discussion about the riddle, it was more about how people react to it on facebook. Btw the solution has long been published, and it leaves the integrity of the "+" and "=" signs intact. All you need to do is perform a google search or visit Randall Jones' facebook profile.

Of course the basic rules of arithmetics are based on definitions and you can redefine everything to mean everything, it's just not much of a math riddle anymore if you proceed like that.

"I struggled with some demons, They were middle class and tame..." L. Cohen

emaho wrote:Of course the basic rules of arithmetics are based on definitions and you can redefine everything to mean everything, it's just not much of a math riddle anymore if you proceed like that.

No need to dismiss those other 2 solutions as invalid math, while championing your own that you haven't even defined. In defense of the redefining "+" solution, mathematics & computer science are intricately linked, completing a CS degree usually meets the requirements for a math minor. Overloading functions is precisely how things get done in many programming languages. Just because it's not your preferred field of mathematics doesn't make the cs solution any less a valid form of mathematics. Saying it's not mathematics or valid mathematics is hardly being respectful, as much as you want to dodge a conversation on this.

Here's a link to another solution:https://eowynsedcstuff.wordpress.com/20 ... 40-nor-96/
This solution assumes changing the bases of the numbers without explicitly stating it, which can be argued as being invalid from a mathematics standpoint. Also, if you read the comments, it seems that the general consensus is that there is no determinate answer. The author of this solution even states: “the entire thing is rather a hoax or psychological test than a mathematical riddle”.

emaho wrote:All you need to do is perform a google search or visit Randall Jones' facebook profile.

You could just spare us the effort...

"My religion is not deceiving myself."Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde

Gosh, I almost forgot that there was a time I didn't think you could just redefine the plus operator.

Either way, if you follow the pattern that people use to get 40, you have to fill in the missing equations leading up to the final one. If you do, the answer is also 96.

Honestly, 201 is a bit of a stretch. Especially since you have to ignore the missing equations to reach that conclusion.

In order to get 19, you have to assume that = is not one of its two established definitions. That is, equality or assignment. Since there is a long history of playing with the plus operator, and not with the equal sign, I'd prefer not to make that assumption.

Relax! Smile From The Heart!
There is a difference between the Mundane and the Transcendental. If you purposefully confuse them, I will ignore you, you nihilist.
There is no Emotion, there is Peace. There is no Ignorance, there is Knowledge. There is no Passion, there is Serenity. There is no Death, there is the Force.

Quinary, huh? Who would've guessed? Completely trapped in the decimal thinking or what?

"My religion is not deceiving myself."Jetsun Milarepa 1052-1135 CE

"Butchers, prostitutes, those guilty of the five most heinous crimes, outcasts, the underprivileged: all are utterly the substance of existence and nothing other than total bliss."The Supreme Source - The Kunjed Gyalpo
The Fundamental Tantra of Dzogchen Semde